Europe's housing squeeze is no longer hidden as costs climb and homelessness grows

A home of your own used to be the baseline assumption of European life. A new annual report from the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) suggests that assumption is quietly collapsing. Between 2015 and 2024, house prices across the EU climbed by 53%, while rents rose by nearly 17%, according to Eurostat data cited in the report. Behind those figures sits a stark warning from FRA Director Sirpa Rautio: soaring costs mean more and more people cannot afford their homes and risk becoming homeless.

The pressure is not evenly distributed. While more than two-thirds of EU residents own their homes, less than half of those living below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold are homeowners. In other words, the security that ownership brings is increasingly reserved for those already on firmer financial ground. Young people, the report finds, are among the groups hardest hit by affordability pressures, and Rautio is blunt about the consequences: vulnerable groups face hardships that undermine their access to the basic right to adequate housing, and many remain unprotected against eviction.

Spain illustrates just how extreme the squeeze has become. Buying a home there now requires more than eight years of full salary, and the average rent for a one-person flat swallows 98.7% of a young worker's pay. At that level, renting alone is effectively impossible without support, shared housing or family wealth — a reality that turns the housing market from a ladder into a locked door for an entire generation.

The most alarming signal in the report is what these pressures are producing. The European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (Feantsa) estimates that nearly 1.3 million people were experiencing homelessness in the EU in 2025, and the FRA notes there are indications that homelessness is on the rise. This is not a marginal problem confined to a few capitals; it is a continent-wide trend with a clear driver in unaffordable housing costs.

The FRA is also keen to remind governments of their legal obligations. The right to adequate housing is recognised under international human rights law and applies to everyone, including migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. International and European agreements require governments to prevent homelessness, improve access to affordable housing and protect people from housing discrimination. Housing, in this framing, is not simply a commodity whose price the market sets — it is a right that states are bound to uphold.

To that end, the report calls for a rights-based approach to housing: one that addresses homelessness effectively, protects against forced evictions and provides safeguards for people in vulnerable situations. The warning is that growing housing insecurity is leaving ever more people at risk of losing their homes altogether. Rautio adds a broader geopolitical note, observing that the EU is increasingly tested in upholding rules-based governance and fundamental rights amid intense instability, and that wars abroad are affecting people's sense of safety and wellbeing at home.

The report covers all 27 EU member states plus Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia, so its reach extends well beyond the union's borders. For readers in the UK, the lessons are uncomfortable but familiar: when prices and rents outpace incomes year after year, the result is not just stretched budgets but rising homelessness. For renters, the report is a reminder that eviction protection and affordability are rights worth demanding. For landlords and investors, it signals that political pressure for intervention will only grow. And for policymakers everywhere, the message is clear — treating housing purely as an asset class carries a human cost that is now being counted in the millions.